The Role of Military History in the Education of Future Officers.
Abstract
Many of you will recognize that dramatization of General Douglas MacArthur's famous Duty, Honour Country' speech delivered at West Point on 12 May 1962 to an audience of officer cadets soon to become junior leaders in the Vietnam War. MacArthur belonged to a generation which produced a group of gifted American, European and British Commonwealth military officers all of whom began their military careers at the end of the nineteenth century in the era of the cavalry and ended their active service in the mid-twentieth century in the nuclear age. What might be styled as the MacArthur generation' presided over a revolution in warfare, but many of its members never forgot that military history was the laboratory of the professional soldier. Through knowledge of history, many of them learned that while military leadership is unique, countless numbers before them had endured on the lonely pinnacle of command. Through history, they recognized that modem warfare while changing all the time was, in its application, an extrapolation of the methods from past warfare. And, because of military history, many of the MacArthur generation knew the worth of their honourable profession - with its special calling, its ethic of service, and its devotion to duty. Although it is sometimes fashionable to suggest that, in order to prosper, today's military must become a New Age organization reflecting contemporary social trends, I want to argue today that the absolutist values outlined by General MacArthur are universal ones; that they have been fundamental to the Western concept of military professionalism in the past and will continue to be so in the future. I suggest that such values can only have true meaning if they are underpinned by a modern appreciation of military history as the corporate knowledge of the profession of arms.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA336221
Entities
People
- Michael J. Evans
Organizations
- United States Army